[Hamara-devel] Keith Packard, Altus Metrum, amateur rocketry, Debian (and almost no advertising)

[Vikas Tara]

On 20/05/15 16:51, shirish wrote:
> Hi all,
> Let me introduce Mr. Keith Packard, although the gentleman needs no 
> introduction. He was the one of the main destructive forces behind 
> X.org being what is today and he's still not done as he's also 
> spearheading wayland and next generation display and compositing 
> servers for FOSS desktops for years to come. While X.org and wayland 
> are and huge topics by themselves it's just a backgrounder about where 
> he's from.
>
> Wikipedia has also dedicated a page about him, see 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Packard :)
>
> But this e-mail is not about him at all but about Altus Metrum, a 
> company which he founded to help him develop his love of amateur 
> rocketry.
>
> Now amateur rocketry is nothing but people flying model rockets till 
> the end of troposphere or just beyond it. I haven't asked Keith till 
> what height their rockets have gone as that is not what the game is 
> about. The real game in here is to understand the difference forces at 
> work on that rocket, designing rockets, seeing how the telemetry 
> worked and what worked and didn't . This is invaluable if you are a 
> young person who wants to know how this all works and wouldn't be 
> possible in the real world unless Keith hadn't come with it. He not 
> only opened up the software for that, he also opened up the firmware 
> needed for those rockets as well as an API for programmers.
>
> See http://altusmetrum.org/ for more. He also went ahead and also 
> opened up the schematics for almost of the hardware that they have made.
>
> See http://git.gag.com/?p=hw/telemetrum;a=summary for the hardware 
> schematic files.
>
> If you look at the short log you would see that Bdale Garbee (another 
> Debian Project Leader, I think 2005-2008) also has contributed to 
> those schematics as well.
>
> Now where does debian come in the picture? Simple, they are the ones 
> who get the latest code out.
>
> See, for instance :-
>
> [$] aptitude show altos=1.6-1
>
>
> Package: altos
> State: not installed
> Version: 1.6-1
> Priority: optional
> Section: electronics
> Maintainer: Bdale Garbee <bdale at gag.com>
> Architecture: amd64
> Uncompressed Size: 29.0 M
> Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libelf1 (>= 0.144), libusb-1.0-0 (>= 
> 2:1.0.8), default-jre | java2-runtime, freetts, nickle, 
> libjfreechart-java
> Suggests: slim | gdm
> Conflicts: altusmetrum-themes, slim-altusmetrum
> Replaces: altusmetrum-themes, slim-altusmetrum
> Description: Altus Metrum firmware and utilities
>  Firmware and utilities needed to support high power model rocketry 
> products from Altus Metrum, including TeleMetrum, TeleMini, and 
> TeleDongle.
>
>  See http://altusmetrum.org/ for more information.
> Homepage: http://altusmetrum.org/AltOS
>
> Now, while it may not be feasible in India atm simply because flying 
> anything in air with permission is hassle, it is a bureaucratic 
> nightmare as was seen in the drones space couple of years back when 
> businesses wanted to fly drones but eventually if there are enough 
> people who want to do that, places will be found and infrastructure as 
> in open spaces without buildings nearby would be found.
>
> Even if we are able to help in creation of even 2-3 this kind of 
> amateur rocket madness, it will do more for science propagation and 
> education then has been done by various State Governments spending 
> lakhs down the drain because simply you cannot copy and have to 
> understand the different dynamics that come into play when playing 
> with amateur rockets.
>
> And of course, as can be seen there is almost no advertising that you 
> would see about it on net anywhere. He hasn't used any google adwords 
> or any digital marketing campaign for he does because he's doing for 
> the love of it and whatever money they are making is a side-benefit to 
> whatever they are doing.
>
> At the end, this is just one package from Debian's 60,000 odd packages 
> that it has :)
>
> Note - People who would be working on microcontrollers and embedded 
> systems would be delighted when they see the specs and the schematics 
> as well.
>
We have already has a little exploration into drone technology - 
although not that much time spent on it yet.

Also we have had some discussion with the guys at http://sflc.in/ who 
would be interested in a joined up campaign to highlight the benefits of 
consumer access to drones.

I think this is a topic we should pick up after the hamara-sugam release.

-- 
Founder - Hamara Linux
www.hamaralinux.org
www.twitter.com/hamaralinux